No regrets, they don't work
by Ilmare-Ilse
Summary: Danny goes back home after visiting Makino and reflects on the choices and mistakes he made 7 years ago. Coda to 7x23.


**A/N: Hello there! I absolutely loved the episode, and needed a little more Danny, maybe getting some comfort himself.**

 **I borrowed some lines from Alex and Scott, let me know if you catch them!**

 **I also have to thank the awesome Narkito for betaing this little story and giving me some ideas to make it better.**

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By the time Danny got back home, Steve was sitting on the couch, watching one of those home renovation shows he loved so much. "Hey, how did it go with Charlie?" He asked quietly as he left the keys on a side table and looked around the living room.

"Hey," Steve said as he stood from the couch and started moving towards Charlie's room with Danny in tow. "It went great! He loved the bed, spent a good hour racing before he went to bed," Steve said with a smile.

Danny leaned to take a peek into Charlie's room, smiling at the sight of his little boy curled up on his race car bed. The smile fell a bit when he looked around the room. "So you did a bit more than finishing the bed…" He commented.

Steve shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking a bit guilty. "Well, by the time I came back here, I had some time before Rachel dropped Charlie off, so I thought it'd be nice if the room was ready when he got here," he said with a shrug. "I'm sorry buddy. Once everything was pretty much ready I realized that maybe you wanted to finish things up."

Danny shook his head, reaching out to pat Steve's shoulder. "Nah, it's alright. You did a great work. Much better than anything I could have done, anyway," he said, his tone somewhat despondent as he moved towards the kitchen in search of a beer.

Steve followed him, shaking his head. "No, man. You're the one that came up with the whole racecar theme, you picked the bed, and you put together most of it. Charlie loved his room, and he told me himself that you're the best!"

Danny was taking a couple of beers out of the fridge, but stopped to take a look at Steve's face. At his encouraging nod, Danny's face split into his first real smile of the day. "Really? He said that?"

Steve nodded, taking one beer from Danny and moving back to the couch. "He literally said 'Danno's the best!'" He said as he sat down, making himself comfortable.

Danny grabbed a bag of chips from the kitchen and went back to the living room, settling next to Steve on the couch. If he was honest with himself, it still hurt when Charlie called him Danno instead of Daddy, but he knew he had his boy's love, and that was what mattered the most in the end.

* * *

They sat on the couch, arguing over Property Brothers and buying horrible houses only to get them renovated, and how much money they could make out of it.

"Just think about it, Danno. We could hire a couple of guys, use part of our pension to buy a couple of houses, and by the time we sell them we'll have enough to buy 10 more!"

Danny shook his head, clearing his throat. "Nononono, you'll just find a way to take over the whole business, make my life miserable and throw away our money in the process!" He said in annoyance, stopping to stifle a cough. He lifted his hand to his neck, rubbing at it gingerly.

Steve straightened out in his seat, turning to look at Danny in concern. "You alright? What's wrong with your neck?"

Danny frowned in confusion. "My neck?"

Steve made some nasty hacking sound as an explanation.

"That's not my neck. That's my throat." Was Danny's answer.

Steve took a beat to come up with an answer himself. "That's part of your neck, it's the _inside_ of your neck," he said quietly.

Danny gave Steve an annoyed look and made an effort not to cough or rub the tender skin of his neck again, but Steve had already noticed that something was off.

"Alright, let me see," he said in a no-nonsense tone, standing up from the couch and moving in front of Danny.

Danny lifted his chin, revealing faint bruising on his neck. "It's nothing. Just that ninja lady got a few lucky hits," he cleared his throat again.

Steve stared at Danny as he did with their suspects, until Danny finally broke.

"Oh, come on! Don't give me constipated face! Unlike some people I know, I'm a responsible adult who heeds medical advice and would consult with a physician if I felt it was needed!"

Steve just kept looking at Danny until he rolled his eyes and lifted his shirt. "It's just bruises. I've had broken ribs before and they're certainly not broken now.

Steve frowned at the bruise in the distinctive shape of a shoeprint. "Don't go anywhere," he said, taking out his phone and moving to the bathroom.

He came back a few minutes later with two pill bottles from Danny's bathroom cabinet and a bottle of water. "Take one of each, Noelani says that they should help with the pain and the swelling," he said as he took Danny's beer. "If it gets worse or you have trouble breathing, then we're going to the emergency room." He finished, sitting back on the sofa and settling to watch the show again.

* * *

The meds made things a bit fuzzy, and Danny was kind of thankful of Steve's foresight in taking his beer. Unfortunately, they hadn't managed to stop the thoughts swirling in his head, much less stop them from bursting out without much thought. "So, the Ochoa Cartel, huh? Who would've thought," he said out of nowhere.

Steve turned to look at him. "Yeah, we hadn't heard about them in a while," he commented.

Danny could remember clearly when was the last time they'd heard about that cartel, and it only added another layer of guilt to the events of that day. "I really fucked it up, didn't I?" He asked no one in particular.

Steve frowned, leaning closer to look at Danny's face. "Fucked up? How exactly did you manage that?"

Danny sighed, lifting his hand to rub at his neck again. "Before he went missing, Makino called me at the precinct. I was talking to Rachel, arguing as we usually did back then, so I didn't take his call right away. I took too long yelling at Rachel and he hung up. By the time I tracked him down, he had already disappeared," Danny said sadly.

"Tanaka figured all the leads had gone cold, so he assigned me to another case," he continued. "So in the end, if I had picked up that call, maybe Makino wouldn't be in a coma, and maybe we would have taken down Ochoa back then." He finished sadly. He couldn't get the image of Meka's body burned like a luau pig out of his head, but he kept that part to himself.

Steve sighed, considering Danny's words. "Well, maybe you're right. On the other hand, if you'd gone after Ochoa back then, maybe you would've become a target as well, and we wouldn't be here right now." He said with a shrug.

Danny didn't reply, just looked at the TV dully.

Steve let the silence linger for a few minutes and with a sigh slid the beer back to Danny's side. He was glad that Danny only took a small sip and not the whole bottle in one gulp. "I told you once that you can't always be second guessing your every move. Whatever it is that happened back then, it brought you here, and I, for one, am kind of glad that things went as they did," he said with a sad smile.

Danny chuckled, clearing his throat again. "That's just the glue talking."

Steve shook his head in amusement, settling back on the couch, finally changing the TV to a hockey game. "So, what case did they assign to you after Makino disappeared?"

Danny shrugged, reaching for another small sip of beer. "Another murder."

Steve turned on the couch, growing interested. "And how did that one go?"

"It was awful at first. It was someone else's case, so for me it was mostly busy work. Then they assigned an asshole to take over, so it was a miserable couple of days, but eventually we caught the guy." He said as he reached for the beer again.

"Well, of course you did. You're the best, remember?" Steve said with a smile, lifting his beer in a toast.

Danny shook his head in amusement. "And you're a goof." He replied, lifting his beer in a toast as well.

Danny had many regrets, but sitting on his couch with his little boy sleeping in his room and his best friend sitting next to him, he had to admit that maybe he hadn't made such terrible choices after all. Well, he could have put Grace in a convent or something like that, but other than that, things weren't so bad after all. Not that he'd admit it to the goof of his partner though.

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The End

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A/N:Thank you very much for reading!

I'd love to hear what you think of this little story.


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